Why does Ranger get no Love!?

[Eleghost.2098]

Hey Guys,

 

Im playing this game since the beta and picked it up a few days ago after i paused since a few months after raids first released.

Ranger was my first class, love on first sight still main him nowdays.

 

But i feel like ranger was always bad or at least everything he could do it felt to me another class could do better, sometimes it could and still can get frustraiting because no one really ever likes rangers in their team no matter the ranger subclass i play..

 

i still love playing ranger, still my favourite class but with the above said in mind i feel like the only time playing ranger was really fun was when druid was first introduced and ppl would love a druid in their fractal/raid group.

 

For the first time ever it felt to me like ranger was actually a good and needed class if you play him as druid and i did a ton of fractal cms and raids with him. 

I mean everyone had like their thing: Warrior=Banner, Guard=Aegis and other good boons and helping skills, Mesmer=quickness and stuff.......just a harsh generalisation but i think u guys get my point.

At that point it felt like ranger got his own thing for the first time. i had a blast with ranger like never before.

 

And now back to the presence i look for fractal groups and all i see again are lfgs for: hfb,bs,alac or sc as basic classes and the rest gets filled with dps or cdps.

So i informed myself about all classes again read snowcrows and metabuilds guides and played some fractals and dungeons again.

 

Lets make it short and painfull: to me it seems like condi ranger and power ranger are good but everything they can do, again, other dmg classes can do better.

and druid may be still first pick healer for raids but in fractals i get why no one wants him because hfb can do his job and, again, even better especially combined with alac.

 

Seems to me like since the beta, exept when raids released and druid had its high, ranger was never too bad but also never on paar with other classes and never had his "own thing" and was never wanted.

 

Its really frustrating cuz i love ranger so mutch it hurts. like an abusive relationship, i want to let go but i cant i went through to mutch and had to many good tmes with him.

also i poured soo mutch ressources into him it feels like starting another class all over cost to mutch time and money.

 

I could go mutch mutch more into detail but i feel like it would make this post infinitly long so i finish at this point.

 

So please tell me guys, am i just to blind to see and ranger is actually bonkers? or why does arena net hate ranger so mutch or at least doesnt love him enough to actually give him a helping hand like their other loved childs(classes).

 

also is there a buff/rework planed for him i doesnt know about?

 

Written by a kinda sad ranger player.

[enkeny.6937]

For 1 reason: we are not bad enough.
We are not the top dps, but we are good, both in condition and strike damage. (expect for druid, but no one cares...)
If there is a ranger in the dps group, it is usually in the middle, so it is pretty balanced. (not the top, not the bottom) 
Ranger has spirits (Unique), druid has 10 target long duration might. giving a common boon like might is not op, spirits/spotter can be brought by any ranger (if must, not optimal). So druid is pretty close to fall out of raids. (and for one perspective, it is good. Not from a druid player's but for the purpose of lfg like: need 2 support, 1 control, 4 dps...)

pets: they are bad. But for a druid they are mobil boon/cc platforms. Soulbeast merg with them, so they are some extra skill/stat. So they are not sensable.

sPvP/WvW: hardly play, so don't know how it is.

So after nerfing the op classes, buffing never used skilled, why would they do anything with things that are working good enough. Not making us OP doesn't mean we aren't loved. :) It means we aren't the favourite.  :P 

   

[bigo.9037]

4 minutes ago, enkeny.6937 said:

For 1 reason: we are not bad enough.
We are not the top dps, but we are good, both in condition and strike damage. (expect for druid, but no one cares...)
If there is a ranger in the dps group, it is usually in the middle, so it is pretty balanced. (not the top, not the bottom) 
Ranger has spirits (Unique), druid has 10 target long duration might. giving a common boon like might is not op, spirits/spotter can be brought by any ranger (if must, not optimal). So druid is pretty close to fall out of raids. (and for one perspective, it is good. Not from a druid player's but for the purpose of lfg like: need 2 support, 1 control, 4 dps...)

pets: they are bad. But for a druid they are mobil boon/cc platforms. Soulbeast merg with them, so they are some extra skill/stat. So they are not sensable.

sPvP/WvW: hardly play, so don't know how it is.

So after nerfing the op classes, buffing never used skilled, why would they do anything with things that are working good enough. Not making us OP doesn't mean we aren't loved. 🙂 It means we aren't the favourite.  😛

   

My issue is the lack of complexity ranger has. I understand the need the not powercreep the game entirely with new especs since HoT, but other classes got way more skills that are fun and useful than what ranger has from especs. 
 

holo has entire new weapon kit, has access to sooo many skills. Weaver got more skills. Firebrand got even more with tomes. Spellbreaker can use both regular f1 and fc. Deadeye has so many unique cool skills on new weapon.. 

 

soulbeast after nerf replaced pet swap with character skills, but still only has the same amount of skills. And MH dagger is terrible in pvp/wvw. No more complexity than core ranger…

 

i don’t want “buffs” for ranger, I just want more complexity so the skill ceiling isn’t so low. And at the same time the skill floor being very high means it’s easy for noobs to pick up and do well on but not much room to grow compared to other more complex classes.

[enkeny.6937]

Well, Anet made the petless ranger, because many asked. They created 40+ new skill for the ranger (soulbest) and you say it is not enough.... Sure, 3/4 of the skills aren't used.  😉 
For complexity, we have 50 pets, you don't need the use the same 4-5. There are situations where you can use spider, devourer, bird, pigs or drakes.

[Avatar.3568]

I wouldn't say Ranger is exactly problematic, it's more the playerbase, all go for benchmarks and kitten, but guess what, 99% of the playerbase will not hit this benchmarks. 

You could probably easily raid with 10 rangers and it would work, it wouldn't be the fastest, but who the kitten cares, we get it done. 

 

People need to get in their mind that benchmarks and stuff doesn't rly count, as long the player understands what to do and how his skills works. 

[anduriell.6280]

It's a bit of everything: Ranger has/had some mechanics to deal with, Anet indulgences any cry in the forum about any ranger mechanic with swift nerfs, as consequence players expecting never to have to deal with any of the profession mechanics, which leads to negative sentiment against the profession as a whole and extends even to the players themselves when that sentiments are reflected in the map chat.

 

 

 

 

Edited July 19, 2021 by anduriell.6280
grammar

[bigo.9037]

9 hours ago, enkeny.6937 said:

Well, Anet made the petless ranger, because many asked. They created 40+ new skill for the ranger (soulbest) and you say it is not enough.... Sure, 3/4 of the skills aren't used.  😉 
For complexity, we have 50 pets, you don't need the use the same 4-5. There are situations where you can use spider, devourer, bird, pigs or drakes.

???? What? Lol.

They created those skills for nothing cus most of the pets are useless AND you can only use 1 at a time. Like I mentioned, the in-combat complexity is quite low on ranger.

[Aeolus.3615]

Druid needs QoL review.....

 

its a cc spambot most cases that can put some minor healing and very good support on avatar form, its a weird controller/support design.... kinda a mess lol.

Edited July 15, 2021 by Aeolus.3615

[enkeny.6937]

2 hours ago, bigo.9037 said:

They created those skills for nothing cus most of the pets are useless AND you can only use 1 at a time. 

When soulbeast came out, you could switch between pets. I think it was necessary to make the 2 skill / pet family. Pet being useless is irrelevant while merged. Like Warthog  for condi soulbeast.     

2 hours ago, bigo.9037 said:

Like I mentioned, the in-combat complexity is quite low on ranger.

Ok, sorry, but I still preferred efficiency over complexity.

Rangers do get what they need. Pets have gotten good survivability, better ai, (yes, they were worse), petless option, damage option, long range damage option. 
Can ranger be improved? Yes.
Are rangers unplayable? No.
 

[bigo.9037]

Just now, enkeny.6937 said:

When soulbeast came out, you could switch between pets. I think it was necessary to make the 2 skill / pet family. Pet being useless is irrelevant while merged. Like Warthog  for condi soulbeast.     

Ok, sorry, but I still preferred efficiency over complexity.

Rangers do get what they need. Pets have gotten good survivability, better ai, (yes, they were worse), petless option, damage option, long range damage option. 
Can ranger be improved? Yes.
Are rangers unplayable? No.
 

The regular pet f skill is extremely important to how viable a pet is, which is why 95% of people use smokescale in pvp and wvw. And I’m not just talking about the regular pet skills. A lot of merged abilities are just not good and borderline useless. And only a select few pets actually have special unique abilities while merged.

who cares about what it was like before? The current state of slb is 1 pet only. 

[Gotejjeken.1267]

2 hours ago, bigo.9037 said:

The regular pet f skill is extremely important to how viable a pet is, which is why 95% of people use smokescale in pvp and wvw. And I’m not just talking about the regular pet skills. A lot of merged abilities are just not good and borderline useless. And only a select few pets actually have special unique abilities while merged.

who cares about what it was like before? The current state of slb is 1 pet only. 

 

I'm not sure if it was you in another topic or someone else, but I will repeat what they said here 'it's important to state what mode you are discussing'.  I mention this because essentially one of you is a PvE player and one a PvP/WvW player--ranger functions very differently depending on where you are.  

 

Pets are a good example, in PvE I'm not sure it really matters what you use most times, but in WvW there are probably four total that are effective across every specialization.  So for competitive this is a big problem, for non-competitive it isn't.  

 

My opinion on this is Path of Fire is what caused the major gap to occur between ranger and other professions.  Ranger got its heal/support role taken away to accommodate the new specs and what it was given (soulbeast) was essentially a 'bugfix' so that you can permanently stow pets.  None of this increased class complexity--in fact it decreased drastically with the sic' em meta that eventually resulted.  

[bigo.9037]

49 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

 

I'm not sure if it was you in another topic or someone else, but I will repeat what they said here 'it's important to state what mode you are discussing'.  I mention this because essentially one of you is a PvE player and one a PvP/WvW player--ranger functions very differently depending on where you are.  

 

Pets are a good example, in PvE I'm not sure it really matters what you use most times, but in WvW there are probably four total that are effective across every specialization.  So for competitive this is a big problem, for non-competitive it isn't.  

 

My opinion on this is Path of Fire is what caused the major gap to occur between ranger and other professions.  Ranger got its heal/support role taken away to accommodate the new specs and what it was given (soulbeast) was essentially a 'bugfix' so that you can permanently stow pets.  None of this increased class complexity--in fact it decreased drastically with the sic' em meta that eventually resulted.  

Yea, that was actually me lol. Woops.

 

 I actually believe anet and players need to ditch the idea that core specs should remain viable compared to especs. Core has less complexity most of the time and in general relies more on simple trait bonuses. Especially for ranger at least. Core is often paired with NM for boons, which barely adds any additional gameplay to your class, it simply makes the few things you have even stronger through passives and more boons.

 

anet needs to STOP adding “tradeoffs” and rather apply balance between hot, pof and the new eod specs. Forget core.
With 3 especs, there should be enough variety to choose from with all the traitlines and other customization that core not being viable wouldn’t limit build diversity in any meaningful way, but at the same time we get much more fun, engaging, deep and balanced gameplay.

 

The game is getting old, and especs are suffering ( and thus overall gameplay) because of the tradeoff mentality.(which isn’t even equally applied across classes…)

Edited July 15, 2021 by bigo.9037

[Zyreva.1078]

1 hour ago, bigo.9037 said:

I actually believe anet and players need to ditch the idea that core specs should remain viable compared to especs. Core has less complexity most of the time and in general relies more on simple trait bonuses. Especially for ranger at least. Core is often paired with NM for boons, which barely adds any additional gameplay to your class, it simply makes the few things you have even stronger through passives and more boons.

 

That's nonsense. Any ranger spec can run NM and get carried by passive boon spam (and by far the majority of those are in fact slb, which is no coincidence, and slb doesn't even have to run nm to be absurdly tanky).

If anything slb is the least complex ranger spec, because it removes the reliance on pet(s) - and pet micromanagement just happens to be the most complex part about ranger. So putting more emphasis on that aspect would be the easiest (and - without complete rework of the entire class - only) way to make ranger more "skilful". And it would mainly affect core ranger. Slb is always going to remain relatively simple mechanically unless they bring back pet swap (which is not going to happen).

Edited July 15, 2021 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[Dadnir.5038]

On 7/13/2021 at 1:55 AM, Eleghost.2098 said:

So please tell me guys, am i just to blind to see and ranger is actually bonkers? or why does arena net hate ranger so mutch or at least doesnt love him enough to actually give him a helping hand like their other loved childs(classes).

Objectively, you've been away when ranger was meta in PvE.

 

Druid have been at the core of PvE meta until ANet managed to bring down chrono in order to open some room for both renegade and FB (so for at least 2.5 years). Deep in HoT, we've even seen core condi ranger being meta. SoulBeast have also been a solid DPS for quite some time in PoF.

 

I can understand that you think the ranger have it hard if you just look at the state when it was the vanilla game and the current state where the ranger isn't outstanding, but fact is that the ranger have had quite a few golden years in between in PvE.

 

NB.: You can also hate PvP, many gamewide nerfs have been done to the ranger due to PvP balance. Be it core, druid or SB they all got some nasty builds that infuriated the PvP community.

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

Same as warrior. It's rather outdated, and while ranger does not have evade attached to half their kit (for some kitten reason - and Power Stab's frames got removed due to double standards), both longbow and shortbow offer gameplay patterns that really are just not very interactive. 

Anet's fix has been to ignore both classes. Aside from nerfs every now and then.

[Aemeteriis.3874]

2 hours ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

And it would mainly affect core ranger. Slb is always going to remain relatively simple mechanically unless they bring back pet swap (which is not going to happen).

Genuinely this is the single worst change they've made to Ranger in the five years Ive been playing, this change needed to happen for sPVP I know from my own experience in the format on the Spec we were toxic and unfightable because of it. In PVE the class is so f%*^#@ clunky now with out it. Definitely not a change that FEELS good in any way when playing Ranger.

Then as for all this assertion from the community at large that SB is or should always be fused is frankly incorrect. I spend at least a quarter of my play unfused for the utility of the pets, albeit that utility is INCREDIBLY g!mp3d now that i cant pet swap in combat.

Edited July 15, 2021 by Aemeteriis.3874
Dawg how is that a bad word Arenanet its literally also the name of a photoshop clone come on

[starlinvf.1358]

On 7/14/2021 at 11:58 PM, bigo.9037 said:

My issue is the lack of complexity ranger has. I understand the need the not powercreep the game entirely with new especs since HoT, but other classes got way more skills that are fun and useful than what ranger has from especs. 
 

holo has entire new weapon kit, has access to sooo many skills. Weaver got more skills. Firebrand got even more with tomes. Spellbreaker can use both regular f1 and fc. Deadeye has so many unique cool skills on new weapon.. 

 

soulbeast after nerf replaced pet swap with character skills, but still only has the same amount of skills. And MH dagger is terrible in pvp/wvw. No more complexity than core ranger…

 

i don’t want “buffs” for ranger, I just want more complexity so the skill ceiling isn’t so low. And at the same time the skill floor being very high means it’s easy for noobs to pick up and do well on but not much room to grow compared to other more complex classes.

 

 

I kind of disagree with the statement and premise, but want to modify the statement that Ranger's don't have skill ceiling problem.... they have a power cap problem.   I've found that Ranger as a class is "stupidly complicated" to perform actions that have very basic pay outs.  It requires very specific rotations to make any competent use of its traits, and the output of that effort is mediocre when its working correctly.  I am 100% convinced this is intentional, since every other spec this designer has worked on, all suffer from this basic issue of highly conditional trait triggers that output very middle ground performance.

 

And you can see this in how most of Ranger's OP combos came into existence.  In general, Ranger skills are pretty flexible in terms of utility, and good baseline damage, but struggle heavily on how we're allowed to chain them.  Whenever a straight forward combo or rotation pops up, the performance is almost game breaking due to how fast we can chain and execute those skills back to back when not forced to detour actions just to trigger traits.  That time Worldly Impact combo for SB was a thing, it was shocking how much damage it could unload in a short time.   Or that time the damage multipliers were easily stacked, letting the LB AA one-shot glassy builds in WvW. 

 

Its clear that the number of skills are NOT the problem....its that the way our traits work creates situations where taking advantage of them are very obtuse, or setup to specifically be mutually exclusive to a rotation decided by the designer. 

 

Also note that early Druid didn't have this problem either, until they changed the scaling of all the skills to REQUIRE Healing power investment to even be notable; and nerfed many of the non-support traits into near pointlessness.  Druid was already a DPS loss out the gate... but it slowly lost all of its non-raid healer applications, including its lock down capabilities, in the quest to increase Raid comp diversity. 

[The Boz.2038]

Pet.

[trunks.5249]

 sorry you feel that way. i love ranger with dire set and weapons' with Celestial rings and annulets is fantastic for me. love my condi ranger more than any class there is

[Eclipsiste.3251]

In WvW and PvP ranger is having a hard time with the increased number of projectile blocks and reflects from other classes. I feel like some builds are invulnerable to projectile attacks with a perma block / reflect rotation.

[Zyreva.1078]

Number of blocks/reflects hasn't increased since years. Ranger is (and always has been) one of the better roamer and small scale fighters in WvW and also has better builds for zerg fights than it used to have. For PvP there are also multiple viable builds. Ranger is not in a bad state in either game mode.

[Sinclair.3407]

On 7/12/2021 at 4:55 PM, Eleghost.2098 said:

Hey Guys,

 

Im playing this game since the beta and picked it up a few days ago after i paused since a few months after raids first released.

Ranger was my first class, love on first sight still main him nowdays.

 

But i feel like ranger was always bad or at least everything he could do it felt to me another class could do better, sometimes it could and still can get frustraiting because no one really ever likes rangers in their team no matter the ranger subclass i play..

 

i still love playing ranger, still my favourite class but with the above said in mind i feel like the only time playing ranger was really fun was when druid was first introduced and ppl would love a druid in their fractal/raid group.

 

For the first time ever it felt to me like ranger was actually a good and needed class if you play him as druid and i did a ton of fractal cms and raids with him. 

I mean everyone had like their thing: Warrior=Banner, Guard=Aegis and other good boons and helping skills, Mesmer=quickness and stuff.......just a harsh generalisation but i think u guys get my point.

At that point it felt like ranger got his own thing for the first time. i had a blast with ranger like never before.

 

And now back to the presence i look for fractal groups and all i see again are lfgs for: hfb,bs,alac or sc as basic classes and the rest gets filled with dps or cdps.

So i informed myself about all classes again read snowcrows and metabuilds guides and played some fractals and dungeons again.

 

Lets make it short and painfull: to me it seems like condi ranger and power ranger are good but everything they can do, again, other dmg classes can do better.

and druid may be still first pick healer for raids but in fractals i get why no one wants him because hfb can do his job and, again, even better especially combined with alac.

 

Seems to me like since the beta, exept when raids released and druid had its high, ranger was never too bad but also never on paar with other classes and never had his "own thing" and was never wanted.

 

Its really frustrating cuz i love ranger so mutch it hurts. like an abusive relationship, i want to let go but i cant i went through to mutch and had to many good tmes with him.

also i poured soo mutch ressources into him it feels like starting another class all over cost to mutch time and money.

 

I could go mutch mutch more into detail but i feel like it would make this post infinitly long so i finish at this point.

 

So please tell me guys, am i just to blind to see and ranger is actually bonkers? or why does arena net hate ranger so mutch or at least doesnt love him enough to actually give him a helping hand like their other loved childs(classes).

 

also is there a buff/rework planed for him i doesnt know about?

 

Written by a kinda sad ranger player.

 

Based on my gameplay in fractals and raids in the last couple of months after May 11th, the main problem here is NOT the ranger being mediocore dps in the group, but actually Anet's decision to make condi being PUG meta in most of the pve contents. I highlighted the word "PUG" because elitist groups still have the best benchmark on power classes. However, as a member of general public, who really cares about the power soulbeast or power DH being meta in an elitist group? In the real situation, most people have real life business and can only pug fractals for fun most of the time. Making condition being meta for PUGs simply make the LFG system constantly asking for CDPS. This is exactly the same as ppl constantly asking for pwr DPS before May 11th (from one pole to another pol). There is not any help in encouraging the groups to be more diversified.

 

The statement about the ranger in May 11th patch:

"The ranger is a potent damage dealer. We’ve seen that Soulbeast has extreme burst damage potential, and unfortunately in this case, this has helped create some very homogenous group compositions."

 

Let's now assess the degree of homogeneity after the patch,

The new homogenous comp has been formed, i.e., condition SCOURGE has been consistently requested in the fractal LFG every now and then.  As a result, a 3 scourge comp + hb + alacRen is pretty much a braindead + immortal comp (as long as they all know some mechs of the encounters) for all the fractal encounters including CMs. In most cases, with this comp, you merely stand still and attack bosses, and no dodging is needed with barrier, passive healing, aegis, and protection boons. While if we are looking at the old pwr comp, it required far more thinking and knowledge of fight to pull good numbers.

 

Let's look at the following comparison:

Pre - May 11th patch: 

Fractal LFG:  hb/alac/pdps/pbs

Diversity in classes break-down:  guardian, revenant, any power classes (slb/weaver/DH were top, but they were not mandatory), warrior.

 

Post- May 11th patch:

Fractal LFG: hb/alac/3 scourge/cdps (most likely cFB, because other condi classes are essentially ineffective in other fractals outside CM100)

Diversity in classes break-down:  guardian, revenant, necromancer.

 

From a possibility of having all classes in the group (pre-patch) to only 3 classes (post-patch) in the group, the conclusion is pretty clear.

[Arrys.7145]

On 7/16/2021 at 3:19 PM, starlinvf.1358 said:

 

 

 

On 7/16/2021 at 3:19 PM, starlinvf.1358 said:

 

 

I kind of disagree with the statement and premise, but want to modify the statement that Ranger's don't have skill ceiling problem.... they have a power cap problem.   I've found that Ranger as a class is "stupidly complicated" to perform actions that have very basic pay outs.  It requires very specific rotations to make any competent use of its traits, and the output of that effort is mediocre when its working correctly.  I am 100% convinced this is intentional, since every other spec this designer has worked on, all suffer from this basic issue of highly conditional trait triggers that output very middle ground performance.

 

 

  We still have OP combo's that are pretty simple to drop and kill targets with.  I think the original poster is felling the more mundane nature of ranger damage.  We still feel like a weapon class like warriors and thiefs which makes us feel simple which I think is partly the OP's point.   Now you can think yourself in circles trying to design a build and chasing synergies you can never quite implement in game chaos.  Which is what I think you are referring to.  

 

Rangers have more manual synergy to create and because of the nature of our talents can try out some synchronizations that don't work very well - and then you hit something in a sweet spot and it absolutely pwns in one way or another and is pretty simple to run.  We have a very powerful toolkit but it has so many variables that can lead to good things, average things and bad.   It was built to keep us mobile for the most part which is why axe 5 is so frustrating as are stationary spirits.  Hard to juke and jive and implement either into your game and most ranger builds need to juke and jive to stay alive. 

 

The common SB power builds but also SB Injector builds drop single targets really really fast and really pretty simply.   We do a good job of maximizing value of split stat condition power amulets for damage having active condition application skills that work synergistically with our injection abilities on LB and warhorn and weapons design assists as well.  Lets face it [sharpening stone][Vulture Stance] - warhorn 4 to LB 2 messes up an opponents day adding in OWP, Quickening Zephyr just makes it worse.   Love the split damage 1k condition/power rune sets....  Thats is zero thinking death dealing(Most targets), challenge is survival between applications.    

 

Thing is once you spec out how you play and construct a build that works operating that build is pretty simple (True of all charachter builds in this game but I have residual muscle memory of 32 hotkey setups in other MMO's.  This game plays simply - skill increase comes from opponent move visual recognition and adaptation.  

 

I'm biased I try playing other classes and they bore me.  To easy and I feel disconnected from the game and what my charachter is doing in it.

[anduriell.6280]

On 8/1/2021 at 12:26 PM, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

Number of blocks/reflects hasn't increased since years. Ranger is (and always has been) one of the better roamer and small scale fighters in WvW and also has better builds for zerg fights than it used to have. For PvP there are also multiple viable builds. Ranger is not in a bad state in either game mode.

Again with this misinformation. 

 

The buff to shared auras and the introduction of FB has increased twice fold the amount of reflections. Buffs as reduced CD  to guardian staff and shield also brought more block/reflections. 

 

Also there is no roaming in WvW from pretty long ago, i don't understand all this talks about roaming unless you are talking about ganking 7 over 1 pver doing daily camps. 

 

[Zyreva.1078]

There hasn't been buffs to aura share or guardian's shield since 6 years. Guard staff does not even provide any reflects or blocks. Before firebrand there were more aurashare tempests and Wall Of Reflection was more commonly used. And FB has also been here since half of this game's lifetime, it isn't new either. Zergs always had high reflect uptime.

Ranger was never meta for zerg play and before expansions not even viable. Soulbeast is the best zerg spec ranger has ever had. Still not meta for pug zergs, because most players need more faceroll builds, but perfectly viable if the players knows what he is doing. Ranger even has it's place in GvGs. When has this been the case in the past? Basically never.

And roaming is still a thing. Solo roaming is in a pretty bad state (which still does not mean it does not exist), but small scale works fine. And again, ranger finally has builds that are actually strong for organised (and outnumbered!) grp play, solo roaming isn't the only thing it is good at anymore. If you think that's all about 7vs1, you clearly have no idea.